High Throughput siRNA Facility

The University of Michigan recently agreed to participate in the Genome-Wide RNAi Global Initiative, joining 22 other leading academic research centers around the world. Created in 2005 by Dharmacon, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., the Global Initiative serves to combine the powerful new capability of high-throughput genome-wide siRNA screening with international scientific exchange and collaboration of its participating institutions to accelerate discovery. U-M's participation has prompted a significant commitment to develop the necessary infrastructure to support this emerging research field.

Together with the Life Sciences Institute, the Medical School (Office of the Dean and the Departments of Pathology and Internal Medicine), the Cancer Center, the Michigan Institute for Clinical Health Research, the Michigan Center for Translational Biology and the Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Center has identified funding to purchase the requisite technology and Dharmacon's library of mouse and human RNAi's for screening. The expansion of the screening facility will include High Content Screening (Cellomics-based high throughput microscopy) capability, improved robotics and additional staffing. The screening facility, planned to be fully operational by 2009, will be managed by and co-located with the LSI's Center for Chemical Genomics.